The three Lantz boys have a way of protecting each other. The oldest, seventeen-year-old Dante, watches over the twelve-year-old brother, Damian; Damian watches over the six-year-old brother, Draydon; and their father watches out for all three of them. Then one day, everything changes. Their father is killed in a mysterious car wreck, and Draydon is injured severely enough to be sent to the hospital. Draydon develops a bizarre fear of mirrors, and he starts seeing things-"strange" things. Damian swears he saw a boy in the road, right before the car accident, and a burn in the shape of a handprint has appeared on his body. Dante, now the man of the Lantz household, has his own problems: terrible nightmares that confuse his sense of dream and reality. The Lantz boys' dilemma seems to heighten with the arrival in town of a carnival. Abel Lantz has been forbidden to see his grandsons, but he's old enough to remember the last time the carnival came to town, over fifty-five years before. Last time, something bad happened to all the twelve-year-old children of town. Abel fears for his own family, while the boys fear for each other. Is there a connection between the carnival and the mysterious difficulties of the Lantz family? And if there is, will Dante figure it out in time to save their lives-and possibly their souls?